We just wrapped up HackTO and I am incredibly humbled by everyone’s participation and all the applications the developers and hackers managed to build in a single day. We had close to 100 participants. 23 applications completed. And of course numerous ones that need a bit of tweaking to be completed. We live in amazing times! Let me take your through our adventures on Saturday. Of course organizing a hackathon requires a lot of planning, a kick ass team (which we have) and incredible sponsors (who support our community) and most importantly YOU. So I am glad YOU made it out. Hopefully learned a few things, meet new people and started thinking about your next idea!

HackTO was a full house. This time around it took place in the FreshBooks fresh offices! Their offices were brand new as they just moved into them and they were gracious and supportive to host us. Big ups to Freshbooks! We could not have asked for a better location.

Before being admitted to the space you had to get pass the official HackTO greeter. She did not accept any bribes unless they were pats on the head! She is known to like popsicles.

We started the day with all the API providers giving a 3 minute presentation about their API and showcasing examples of what has previously been built using their respective APIs.

As of 10:30 AM it was off to the races for everyone! 6.5 hours to the finish line. And those hours fly by so quickly specially when to be eligible for any prizes, your application needs to be completed and ready to demonstrate to the judges. HackTO had an awesome line up of prizes. This time around the HackTO prizes included cash prizes as well as API sponsored prizes:

The catch of course was that the developed application had to be completed or at least be in a state where its features could be demonstrated to the judges. Our HackTO judges included Judy Blumstock and David Crow:

We believe that a hack is “an appropriate application of ingenuity”.

At the end of the day 23 applications were completed for HackTO and in order of presentation they were:

FreshTrends by Vlad. This application used the WordPress.com and Trendspottr APIs. FreshTrends displays and searches trends in tile formats from blog post searches

AroundMe by Terence and Adan. This application used the YellowAPI, Twilio and GoogleMaps. This application shows youthe services and amenities close to your neighbourhood. You enter your postal code or address as the search criteria and AroundMe returns the list of businesses close to your address. Pretty awesome to use when you move to a new neighbourhood

HackPad by Alan. Built using the SoundCloud API, this application is a a music loop machine plus trigger pads.

LocalTracks. This application by Dave allows users to find music they like in their local city. You can try it here. The application used the SoundCloud API.

Audio-Cache. This application built by Ash, Bartek and Craig. This application allows you to find where music sound bits where recorded. Geocaching for music. This application used the Twilio and SoundCloud APIs and the Leaflet API for maps.

Pitch. This application built by David used the Shopify and SoundCloud API to allow you to sell your SoundCloud tracks on Shopify.

Imelda Dreams in Colors. This application built by Martine and Mark used the TinEye MulticolorEngine to allow you to search a Zappos shoe collection of 30,000 shoes by colors.

BandManager. This application built by Rudolf used the YellowAPI and Trendspottr. It allowed you to manage bands, book venues and check out where your favourite bands were booked.

LastResort. This application built by Victor, Scott and Ian used the Twilio and ContextIO APIs. LastResort allowed you to route your server support to the right person to deal with a server crash for example.

HeartMap. Built by Antony’s team and using the Twillio and Yellow APIS was a dating application. It allowed you to call a potential date and schedule a date. It also allowed you to search local businesses in the area of your date to send them flowers, chocolate or anything to make your date awesome!

Twilio Speed Dating. Built by Cory, this application used the Twilio API. It was a chat roulette without the surprise. You registered and added your phone number. You were able to make a call to a select date in the network, they could choose to answer your call or not.

Sound in Color. This application developed by Ken, used the TinEye MulticolorEngine and SoundCloud API. The application analyzed the a sample music file and determined its loudness and based on its loudness, it associated it with a color and then searched a Flickr image collection for images containing those colors.

Moziac. This application developed by Leo used the TinEye MulticolorEngine to create a mosaic of the Firefox logo using images pulled from an image collection being searched and organized by the Firefox logo colors.

80S Joke Line. This application built by Max, Sam, Ram and Houssam used the Twilio and SoundCloud APIs. Users get to call a phone number to either tell a joke or listen to a random joke. Live now.

CDOT. This application built by Jon, Scott, Matt and Dave used the TinEye Multicolor API. The app a Firefox logo mosaic using multiolor search.

3 minutes. Built by Ted, the application used the Twilio and SoundCloud APIs. The idea is for people to be able to hear a 3 minute story. You can subscribe to the service and provide your phone number. Users call in and record a 3 minute story. All subscribers get a phone call the next day and get to listen to a 3 minute story. Story sharing.

StockTrendio. Built by Ibrahim, Terry and Mark, this application used the Trendspottr and Twilio APis. It allowed you to receive stock information directly to your mobile phone.

AtomicReader built by Terry using AtomicReach. This application build a tile of blog posts based on subject matter and updated in real time.

FreshFaxes.com. Peter, Matt and Chris used the Freshbooks API to build an application that allows you to send your invoices by fax automagically to your clients!

TinEye Mozaic. Using the TinEye MulticolorEngine, Kent built an application that allows you create a photo mozaic using multicolor search. His application included drag and drop and the ability to save your mosaic.

Geo DJ. Built by Ankit and Jean Luc using the SoundCloud and Yellow API. This application allowed you to search for a business and listen to the music or sounds associated with the tags describing the business.

Podcasting Robots. This application built by Mo used the WordPress.com, SoundCloud and Twilio APIs. Mo wanted everyone to enjoy the sweet sounds of robots reading his blog posts. This application basically robotifies your blog!

MusicConnect. Built by Dileshni, Uzi, Susahosh and Marek. This application used the SoundCloud and YellowAPI. It allowed you to pull music you liked from SoundCloud, find people who liked the music you pulled and using the Eventful API find out where these music bands were performing. The application also allowed you to find out what type of music users users who liked your type of music, also liked. Music discovery + search + events.

And DRUM ROLL, the HackTO winners were:

NUMBER 1: LastResort

NUMBER 2: HackPad and NUMBER 3: Sound in Color

But of course these were not the only HackTO winners. Additional winners were selected by the API providers for the best use of a specific API and these include:

AtomicSearch for best use of AtomicReach API

FreshFaxes.com for best use of the FreshBooks API

FreshTrends for best use of the Trendspottr and WordPress.com APIs

GeoDJ AND AroundMe for best use of the YellowAPI

Moziac for the best use of the TinEye MulticolorEngine

80s Joke Line for best use of the SoundCloud API and many more, so please stay tuned for a complete winners update!

Thanks for our awesome sponsors for making HackTO possible. And a big shout out to the YellowAPI for being the lead sponsor for HackTO and helping us to continue bringing hack events to Canadian cities. High fives to Klick Health for joining us and helping us to provide awesome prizes to our hackers and developers.

Just in case you have not been staying in the loop: HackTO is this weekend on Saturday April 14. Registration is still open but will certainly close very shortly, so if you have been hesitating to get your ticket, this is your last chance!

The API line up for HackTO is looking great! So to get you started in thinking about the application(s) you will be building on Saturday, here is the API line up in alphabetical order. Enjoy and come prepared! There will be a couple of additions in the coming days, so check back often and as always, at HackTO you are not limited to only using the provided APIs. You can build your application with any APIs you wish to use, provided you use at least one of the HackTO APIs.

Atomic Reach is a social content platform that helps brands looking to leverage content marketing to drive engagement, brand awareness and sales conversions. As a social publishing platform, Atomic Reach lets users leverage content from multiple contributors and use it to build more engaging web sites. Content creators can use Atomic Reach to distribute their content to a variety of places. Their API lets developers create their own applications to integrate with and extend the Atomic Reach platform.

Context.IO is leading a new wave of innovation on email. Conversations, collaboration and document exchange happens in email on a daily basis. Context.IO provides a unique email API that makes it easy for application developers to retrieve that information and leverage it in applications such as CRM, document management, collaboration and project management. Check out Context.io API documentation and examples before Saturday!

FreshBooks is an online invoicing service with a few goals in mind: easy & fast record keeping, simple billing, and safe data. It’s no wonder they have over 3.5 million clients! With this kind of client base, FreshBooks opened up their API to 3rd party developers to create their Add-on Store, where developers can create and promote applications that integrate directly with FreshBooks clients’ accounts.

The FreshBooks API site gives a brief overview of the service before it goes into more detail about authentication, application-specific billing, webhooks, and their various endpoints. They also provide links to API libraries published by other developers in Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, and others, making connecting to the API a snap. The Sample Code page also helps quite a bit, with examples for authentication, plugins, third-party apps, and their own internal integration code as well. FreshBooks uses OAuth for authentication, similar to other modern API platforms, and has full documentation and examples to get you set up.

Examples of applications that have been built with the FreshBooks API can be seen on their add-on community page, and include project management, customer management, accounting, expense, time tracking, lead generation, marketing, payment gateway, productivity, and eCommerce software packages. FreshBooks also maintains a developer blog, tips page, and google group for fielding any API / development questions.

Shopify is an ecommerce platform that hosts 20,000+ online stores used by millions of users around the world.

The Shopify API is implemented as JSON or XML over HTTP using all four verbs (GET/POST/PUT/DELETE). Each resource, like Order, Product, or Collection, has its own URL and is manipulated in isolation. In other words, the API follows the REST principles as much as possible.

If you are wondering about what kind of applications you could develop using the Shopify API, well wonder no more, Joey DeVilla who will be providing support for the Shopify API on Saturday is giving you a head start with his blog post!

SoundCloud provides a platform for content creators to share audio content on the web. SoundCloud currently has over 10k registered applications using their API with about 300 promoted and accessible applications in their app gallery. Visit the gallery for some inspiration and to see what other developers have built with the SoundCloud API.

There are over 10 million users of SoundCloud, a huge number of whom contribute content. You can become familiar with the SoundCloud API ahead of Saturday by reviewing their documentation and available SDKs.

The SoundCloud API is built with the design principles of REST in mind, exposing SoundCloud resources like tracks, sets and users which can be accessed and manipulated using the HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT and DELETE. SoundCloud aims to provide all features which are available on SoundCloud.com itself through the API as well. And the SoundCloud team even has a developer manifesto! Bravo!

TinEye is providing 2 APIs: MobileEngine and MulticolorEngine (formally know as PixMatch and Piximilar). These two APIs are image recognition based APIs which allow searching by images.

MobileEngine uses mobile variants of the same algorithms that power TinEye. MobileEngine is designed to find a match for mobile phone picture in a collection of original/target images. It can find duplicate and altered versions of images using fingerprint based searching algorithms. It can find images that have been cropped, resized, rotated, flipped, obscured, blurred etc. Some examples of use are to match a book cover to a collection of covers. Same with CDs & DVDs, stamps, currency etc. It works with rigid flat objects but not 3D soft objects like clothing, fruit or family pets!

The MobileEngine API can be integrated with any mobile application. For HackTO this API image collections is not pre-populated which means that if you want to develop and launch a mobile image search application integrated with this API, you will need to create a database of images for your search. The TinEye team and their documentation can assist you with that prior to the start of HackTO. Get in touch.

MobileEngine is delivered over HTTP as a REST API with responses delivered in JSON format. Each operation is completely atomic, meaning that given a request, other requests will wait for the first request to complete before they are processed. All responses from the API will have these keys:

status: indicates the status of the request, can be one of ok, warn, fail

method: the method that was called

result: list of results for the method

error: list of errors from the API

The main methods for MobileEngine are:

add: Used to populate your collection. There is one collection for everyone so please use a prefix with your images if you want to make sure that they will not be overwritten.

search: Used to search against your collection and returns matches. Optional search parameters are min score, max number of matches and horizontal flip.

delete: Delete images from your collection by passing a filename.

list: Lists the images in your collection

Full documentation for the API will be provided at the start of HackTO.

MulticolorEngine searches an image collection using one or more colors. TinEye will be providing a two APIs for the MulticolorEngine:

A read-only API (http://multicolorengine.tineye.com/hackdays_flickr/) pre-populated and loaded with 3 million Creative Commons Flickr images. You will not be able to add or delete images from this collection.

A blank r/w API (http://multicolorengine.tineye.com/hackdays/) that you can load up with any images you like

(These links are not live but will be the day of HackTO!) To get a feel for the capabilities of the MulticolorEngine, visit the Idée lab.

MulticolorEngine is also delivered over HTTP as a REST API with responses delivered in JSON format. The main methods are:

color_search: Used to perform a color searches against the collection and return any matches with scores. You can specify up to 5 colours with weights in RGB or hex format.

extract_colors: Given an image, extract up to 10 colours and their dominance.

MulticolorEngine also supports full meta-data searching but we’re recommending you not to get into this unless you really need to – it is still in beta!

TrendSpottr is a real-time viral content discovery service that identifies the most timely and trending information for any topic or keyword. Trendspottr core technology analyzes real-time data streams such as Twitter and Facebook and spots emerging trends at their earliest acceleration point — hours or days before they have become “popular” and reached mainstream awareness. TrendSpottr serves as an early warning system and is being used today by leading news agencies and media companies, social marketing platforms and social media users to identify emerging news, events and issues that have high viral potential. TrendSpottr is available as a free-to-use service at http://trendspottr.com and as a partner application on the HootSuite platform.

The TrendSpottr search API allows you to query the TrendSpottr service to request current top trending information from twitter or Facebook for a given search parameter or twitter list specification and retrieve the results in JSON or JSONP format. Results include currently trending URLs, hashtags, sources and phrases. There is a full description of the API, including documentation and a sample PHP file, available .

Twilio, the cloud communications company, is reinventing telecom by merging the worlds of cloud computing, web services and telecommunications. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud, allowing web developers to integrate phone calls, text messages, and IP voice communications into their web, mobile, and traditional phone applications.

While HackREGINA featured a fun voice-to-search and search-to-voice interface, I imagine we’ll see a lot more clever integrations like this at HackTO. Interested in what sort of other projects have been built with Twilio? Check out their project gallery.

WordPress.com just released a RESTful API that lets you interact, explore, and create great content with the millions of blogs and users on the WordPress.com network. Using OAuth-based authentication, you can access or create posts and comments or Follow and Like on behalf of users. Use the Freshly Pressed endpoint to access the best content, handpicked daily, being created across the network.”

This API will be fully presented by Mo Jangda who is a veteran of our hackathons and a HackTO previous winner!

The Yellow Pages API seems pretty basic – 4 endpoints, a handful of options which makes a great API to start working with. But don’t let that fool you! The depth of their dataset if pretty awesome. The YellowAPI provides 4 basic endpoints for developers – FindBusiness, GetBusinessDetails, FindDealer, and GetTypeAhead. It starts off as a pretty standard business look-up tool and from there, you get access to all of the rich, curated data from the Yellow Pages dataset, including phone numbers, business categories, product information, videos, photos, business logos and much more.

Combine the above with rich documentation and you get an awesome API! Using their “I/O Docs”, you can easily test out calls to the API from the browser, seeing exactly what your query should look like and what the resulting XML or JSON will be. Extremely helpful to developers! In addition, YellowAPI offers a handful of SDKs for quick integration: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Visit the App Gallery to get an idea of some of the rolled out applications and to start planning your app development!

A huge round of applause for Yellow Pages Group and YellowAPI.com – they’ve stepped up once again to be the HackDays Champion sponsor for HackTO happening in Toronto on Saturday April 14.

When you first start researching the Yellow Pages API, it seems pretty basic – 4 endpoints, a handful of options. But when you start working with it you realize the depth of their dataset and how well put together their API support is, the possibilities are endless! YellowAPI provides 4 basic endpoints for developers – FindBusiness, GetBusinessDetails, FindDealer, and GetTypeAhead. It starts off as a pretty standard business look-up tool and from there, you get access to all of the rich, curated data from the Yellow Pages dataset, including phone numbers, business categories, product information, videos, photos, business logos and much more.

Combine the above with rich documentation and you get an awesome API! Using their “I/O Docs”, you can easily test out calls to the API from the browser, seeing exactly what your query should look like and what the resulting XML or JSON will be. Extremely helpful to developers! In addition, YellowAPI offers a handful of SDKs for quick integration: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

Start-ups, Fortune 500 companies and developers have used YellowAPI. Visit the App Gallery to get an idea of some of the rolled out applications. Reservely was a HackDays winner last year:

The opportunities are endless and that’s why we are super excited to welcome YellowAPi to HackTO again!

YellowAPI has been an awesome HackDays sponsor from the beginning and we are extremly privileged to continue bringing hacking events across Canada with their help and support. We just wrapped up HackRegina – which was our first appearance in Regina – and HackVAN – which was our second hackathon in Vancouver and we are looking forward to many more hackathons across Canada, including Ottawa, Montreal and other cities.

If you are wondering what happens during our hackathon and how it looks like, well wonder no more and take a look at this little video showcasing prior hackathons and promoting our last hack event (HackVAN).

Presented by HackDays in partnership with YellowAPI

We just wrapped up HackVan and HackRegina in March and are now a short 12 days away from HackTO. I still remember our first HackTO. It was the first hackathon Corey and I organized in Toronto. It was awesome and we learned some great lessons about organizing hackathons (who organizes a hackathon in mere days?). Despite everything, our first hackathon was fantastic because it brought together some of the brightest developers in Toronto and our start up and tech community. In less than 8 hours 50 developers put together an impressive 13 applications with APIs provided and supported by our local startups and the tech community at large. We were blown away by the support from our community and sponsors and decided that we were going to hack our way around Canada. That was the beginning of our hacking adventures and since then we have held hackathons in Ottawa, Regina, Vancouver and Waterloo. And we are planning to continue connecting Canada’s tech communities.

So now, we are back with the second edition of HackTO and this one promises to be bigger than our first HackTO and of course we are looking forward to an awesome line up of APIs, developers, sponsors and support from our tech and startup community – again!

First the event details:

Who: everyone! old friends, new friends, old hackers, new hackers. You are all welcome

What: HackTO #2. An all day hackathon

When: Saturday April 14, 2012 from 9 AM to 8 PM

Where: The new Freshbooks HQ: 35 Golden Avenue, Suite 105

Registration is now open. So grab a ticket and start plotting your world domination!

This time around we are opening up tickets as well for the evening presentations, so if you are not interested in building an app and hacking away with us, you can still drop by and check out the awesome applications built and meet your community and the hard working developers!

We will be keeping the same crazy schedule of our previous hackathon and pretty much the same set up. There will be:

Awesome APIs and developers who will be supporting the APIs you will be working with

API introductions, presentations and workshops for you get up to speed on the APIs you will be working with

Food and drink all day long – you won’t have to worry about a thing!

Fantastic prizes from our sponsors

Cash prizes from API providers and startups

And a fantastic opportunity for you to meet your startup community and other talented developers. And let’s not forget a great opportunity to flex your coding muscles

SCHEDULE

9:00 – Breakfast and introductions: Meet your HackDays organizers & all the developers, get acquainted with the space + final schedule + grab a breakfast of champions!

9:30 – API presentation: learn about the APIs available. Each API provider will have 5 minutes to introduce their API, discuss its salient features and get you excited about using it.

10:15 – Open Planning: come up with hacking idea and build a team. This is a white board exercise: if you have an idea that you would like to work on, just put its name down on the white board; if you are looking to build a team, identify yourself to other developers with the skill sets that you need. If you are looking for ideas, identify yourself to other developers as well.

10:30 – Hacking setup and start. You claim a little spot of the office with your team or by yourself and start working on your project. All the API providers will be available the entire day to provide support.

Noon – Lunch

1:00 – Continue hacking – help yourself to all the energy snacks you need!

Would you like to help us make this hackathon the best Toronto hackathon ever? Get involved!

We are looking for:

APIs: does your company have an awesome API? Tell us about it, and let’s get you on board

Sponsorships: nothing would be possible without the awesome support of our community and our sponsors. You can help us by becoming a sponsor for the hackathon or the pre or post hackathon party. We would love to speak with you about sponsorships, so please get in touch!

Getting in touch: Got an idea you would like to discuss with us, got a suggestion? Would like to see a particular API included? Drop us a note!

PRIZES

There will be tons of prizes for HackTO#2. Official prizes and company sponsored prizes.

Official HackTO#2 Prizes:

First place: $2,000

Second place: $1,500

Third place: $500

For HackTO#2, we will be introducing company sponsored prizes. These will be prizes for the best use of a company API. Stay tuned for our announcement in the coming days!

HackREGINA Location Sponsor

Innovation Place - Innovation Place is home to approximately 40 clients in six buildings, employing more than 1,600 people.

HackREGINA Event Sponsors

iQmetrix Software - At iQmetrix, we create great experiences for retailers, their employees, and the end consumer.

GB Internet Solutions - We’re proud parents to GasBuddy.com and OpenStoreLoyalty.com, and while we don’t like to play favorites, the GasBuddy app has over 30 million downloads!

HackREGINA Community Sponsors

YellowAPI - Our curated local search API is built off of the strength of the Yellow Pages database of over 1.5 million geo-localized business listings and associated rich content.

Canadian Youth Business Foundation - Are you an aspiring young entrepreneur, aged 18 to 39, with a solid business idea? Are you looking for the financial support and expert advice that will help you bring your great business idea to life? The Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) can help.

HackREGINA API Sponsors

eHealth Saskatchewan - eHealth Saskatchewan employees and consultants are committed to making a difference for Saskatchewan residents by supporting health care providers through making important clinical information available electronically.

Cashtie - InComm’s new Cashtie API opens up access to retailers point of sale (POS) systems, allowing any approved developer to sell online goods to consumers at these high value retail locations—opening up the possibility for web and mobile applications to accept cash payments for virtual goods, services and utilities at top retailers.

Twilio - Twilio powers the future of business communications, enabling phones, VoIP, and messaging to be embedded into web, desktop, and mobile software.

Wit - Wit allows you to build a Siri-like speech interface for you app in 5 min! It's an API that turns speech or text into JSON.

Windows Azure - Add a cloud backend to your apps in minutes, enabling your apps to reach every user on every platform. With support for popular languages and open REST APIs, you’ll be ready to integrate Windows Azure into your apps in minutes. Use any of Windows Azure’s APIs to complete your hacks. You’ll need to activate a FREE trial or your MSDN Windows Azure benefits prior to using Windows Azure.